Ted Frank
Theodore Harold Frank (born December 14, 1968) is an American lawyer, activist, and legal writer based in Washington, D.C.[1] He is the counsel of record and petitioner in Frank v. Gaos, the first Supreme Court case to deal with the issue of cy pres in class action settlements; he is one of the few Supreme Court attorneys ever to argue his own case.
[2] He wrote the vetting report of vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin for the John McCain campaign in the 2008 presidential election.
He was on the executive committee of the Federalist Society's Litigation Practice Group and contributed to conservative legal weblogs, and, as of 2008, was a member of the American Law Institute.
He is a grandson of journalist Nelson Frank, a nephew of author Johanna Hurwitz, and a cousin of the politics editor of The Atlantic Online, Garance Franke-Ruta.
[15] He graduated from the Benjamin Franklin High School in New Orleans, then earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in economics from Brandeis University in May 1991.
[25] The whole point of a class action is to generate efficiencies that wouldn't be possible in individual actions—so why are the attorneys taking a one-third contingent fee instead of a much smaller percentage?
In 2003, Frank began contributing regularly to Overlawyered, a legal weblog edited by Walter Olson that advocates tort reform; he continued there through 2010.
[27] Frank joined the American Enterprise Institute in 2005 when AEI offered him a fellowship to research the effects of the Class Action Fairness Act.
[25] As the director of the AEI Legal Center for the Public Interest he spoke and wrote about civil justice issues and liability.
[8] According to Frank, he became disillusioned at class action tactics, and the willingness of judges to approve settlements he felt were poor for consumers.
[37] Jon Haber, CEO of ATLA, responded in the Post, accusing Frank of proposing to destroy "the nation's civil justice system to benefit the insurance industry, drug companies and other corporate powers", of a "laughable" claim that too many lawsuits "may transform the nation into a 'banana republic'", of "find[ing] the fight for justice trivial" and making "nothing more than an attack on the Constitution of the United States".
[39] In a Wall Street Journal opinion piece in 2007, Frank said that the Department of Treasury and SEC should urge the Supreme Court to reject expanded securities litigation liability in Stoneridge v.
[44] On appeal, the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press,[45] the Society of Professional Journalists,[46] the American Society of News Editors,[47] the New York Times,[48] the Washington Post,[48] the Associated Press,[48] and law professors and First Amendment experts Eugene Volokh[49] and Glenn Reynolds, among others, filed amicus briefs in support of the defendants saying that there was no actionable claim of libel.
"[54] In Mark Halperin and John Heilemann's book Race of a Lifetime: How Obama Won the White House (2011), they describe the vetting at length.
[54] Operating largely on donations, the CCAF in a short period has gained a reputation as a formidable check on highly questionable practices that have gone unchallenged precisely because they are the product of collusive parties and allied judges.
[59][60] In a securities case involving Citigroup, Frank exposed overbilling by the plaintiffs lawyers and won $26.7 million for shareholders.
[61][62] Frank won reversal of a "worthless" settlement involving Subway footlong sandwiches paying class members nothing.
[63] Frank founded CCAF after his successful objection to the proposed class action settlement in the Grand Theft Auto consumer fraud case.
[75] The case brought Frank before Northern District of California Chief Judge Vaughn Walker, where he challenged the fairness of a settlement, which consisted of coupons for antivirus software.
[81][82][83] In 2013, Frank unsuccessfully sought certiorari to a challenge to an all-cy-pres settlement involving Facebook in Marek v. Lane; however, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote separately to suggest the Court had “fundamental concerns” about the issue.
"[85] Bloomberg News stated that Judge Davlia remarked that the lack of transparency in selecting the recipients of the money "raises a red flag" and "doesn’t pass the smell test", although it was nonetheless approved.
